


Gratitude and Strawberries

by MarindaB



Category: Last Tango In Halifax
Genre: F/F, No Lesbians Die, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 21:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20124412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarindaB/pseuds/MarindaB
Summary: Almost a year post the Season 4 Christmas, both Caroline and Gillian stumble into something more...





	1. Self Control

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic ever...inspired by (1) having just recently discovered LTIH; (2) wishing Gillian and Caroline would get together; (3) thinking, oh, someone on the internet has probably thought of that; (4) finding all the awesome writing here; and (5) deciding to try my hand at it. I hope someone gets some modicum of enjoyment from this, because I'd like to pay it forward... I have loved reading the other entries and am chuckling at the passion and creativity of us human beings.

Caroline and Gillian are alone again. William — whose short visit was the impetus for the family gathering — has taken the late train home, and Lawrence has gone back to Harrogate with Judith and John, the thin thread holding them all up intact for another night.Flora is long asleep, of course.And Celia and Alan have gone to bed, taking two mugs of hot tea with them to ward off the lingering damp.Caroline can hear them shuffling about upstairs, the noise of creaky floorboards and muffled laughter echoing through the old house.It surprises her, how pleasant she finds the sound.

So, once again, it is Gillian who occupies Caroline’s after hours, their easy conversation filling the time before Gillian drives herself back to her own empty farmhouse, only to text again in the morning — _Sleep OK Caz? Pint after work?_

Gillian seems different tonight, though.Happy.She is all kinetic and bouncing as usual, but smiling and comfortable in her helpfulness, puttering about Caroline’s kitchen with ease.At dinner, she jumped up from the table to refill glasses of water and wine, fetched more butter when she noticed the dish is empty halfway through the meal. She skipped out of her chair to clear the plates, looking Caroline straight in the eye and smiling as she said, _You sit_, and laying a hand on Caroline’s shoulder as she squeezed behind her chair on the way back from depositing the dishes in the leaky sink.

Caroline is used to Gillian’s mini-touches, of course, but that particular one lingered a moment more than she was used to; the weight of Gillian’s hand more solid than it had felt before. She could feel Gillian’s fingers through the fabric of her sweater; their warmth reached her skin.Caroline had the impulse, in the moment, to reach up and touch Gillian’s hand while it rested on her shoulder, recalling Kate’s ghost.But she did not move, she just shifted in her chair, and Gillian then lifted her hand.Caroline watched her find her seat. She was smiling, a little, her eyes were cast down, it seemed she was blushing.

Caroline filed it away as another curious Gillian moment, still wondering what accounted for her steadier stance, extra dose of boldness.Their intimacy is always shifting, deepening, contracting and then pulling back again. There is something between them, something besides the secret of Eddie.Caroline feels sometimes — like tonight — like Gillian is a match ready to be lit.As if with one move, the whole nature of their friendship could shift, the way one gust of wind can start a forest fire that decimates hectares, years of undergrowth, thousands of species.Paving the way for new saplings.

Gillian is in the kitchen, drying a large platter, holding it up to her chest, washing it like a window.

_Good meal, Caz, _she says, and again, Caroline senses something in her, a groundedness, a surety that feels new.Caroline sits at the high table she cobbled together from old cabinetry she took down to make room for the double-doored fridge and watches her, then catches herself.

_I’ll help in a moment. Just getting off my feet. _Caroline feels anticipatory exhaustion; she is fine now, but Flora wakes before dawn.

_Nah, _Gillian smiles, _I got the washing. You drink_.She places a half-filled wine glass in front of Caroline. It was Gillian’s from earlier in the evening, with a small pink lipstick stain on it, and Caroline puzzles over it for a moment, not reaching for it.

_Have mine, _Gillian clarifies, gesturing to the glass.Caroline looks at the smudge. Gillian is wearing lipstick? Gillian is giving her wine away?She cannot decide which is more surprising, and silence betrays her confusion.

_Too good to have my germs on yer glass? _Gillian cocks her head, but it does not feel accusatory, it’s the look she gives Caroline often, that seems to say, _OK, I’m still learning about you._

_It’s not the germs_—Caroline starts, but Gillian has already wiped the rim of the glass with the tail of her plaid shirt and is filling it to the brim with a fresh bottle.

_You’re not going to drink it yourself?_ Caroline says, aware of where the lipstick stain was on the glass; aware of its shadow facing her.

Gillian smiles._I’m trying this new thing_, she says. She puts down the platter, definitively, as if an announcement is coming, and then makes a banner in the air with her hands. _Self control_, she says, loud, low, and then laughs. It is a short cackle.It is the sound that Caroline has come to realize relaxes a spot between her shoulders like nothing else. She leans back contentedly in her chair.

_Cheers to you_, Caroline says, tipping her glass towards Gillian, watching her arms, taking the liberty of gazing at her small, muscular back at work, feeling like she’s managed to build some semblance of a home.


	2. Three Strange Things

A few weeks later, dinner is just the two of them, at Gillian’s. Flora is with Greg, and when Caroline receives text message upon text message of regrets and cancellations for the family reservation she’d made in town, she asks Gillian if she’d like to keep the plan for the just the two of them. Gillian suggests instead that Caroline come over, explaining that her _week had been shit_, and she had _just chopped some wood_, and they could have a f_ire and not have to wear shoes while dining in some stuffy place_.

Caroline grabs a bottle from Olga’s reserve and a box of fancy chocolates. She stops home for jeans and slippers, too, and pulls up to Gillian’s driveway feeling a combination of relaxation and giddiness that she can’t explain.

When she walks through the side door and hangs her shearling coat on the metal hook that she thinks of as hers, the first strange thing strikes her—music. Gillian’s house is full of music—classical, lovely, sensual, with loud violins. Caroline has only ever heard BBC news from Gillian’s house, never anything atmospheric, and it uplifts the whole place, as if through the music, moonlight is about to fill the house.

The music muffles Caroline’s arrival so she can see through to the kitchen and spy Gillian, before Gillian knows she is there. And then she registers the second strange thing.Gillian is wearing a dress.It is blue, fitted, with a boatneck neckline, with her red knit sweater over it. Caroline fears, for a moment, that Gillian is getting ready for something else—for someone else—that Caroline is a fool, that Gillian had thought she’d been texting someone else about fires and wine—some shag buddy or grim Robbie replacement—but then Caroline spies the third strange thing and she knows she was expected.

Strawberries. Gillian is at the sink in her blue dress and her wine-colored cardigan hulling blood-red strawberries. She is soaking them in a large ceramic bowl and taking the cores off with such care, and Caroline knows that Gillian has gotten them for her—it is approaching winter, so she’s paid premium, Caroline guesses, at the market in Halifax that she hates—but here they are, ripe and abundant on the counter.

It was something Caroline had said a few weeks ago.Gillian was leaning in her kitchen doorjamb with a cup of tea, Flora was toddling about naming the seasons, and, to the delight of her daughter, Caroline was listing everything she loved about winter—the snow, and trees, and Christmas, and skiing, and decorations, and peppermint—and then she said: _The only bad thing about winter is that there are no strawberries_.Flora giggled, repeated _berry berry_ as she ran around the table, and Gillian smiled at Caroline, eyes flickering with some kind of knowing—or, as Carline realizes now, with an idea.

Caroline watches as Gillian picks up each of the berries, in some kind of peace, contemplating, it seems, each morsel of fruit rather than seeing them as a job to be done. The delicacy of it stops her — she is so used to Gillian the fast, Gillian the shaking, the cutting, the stuttering swift.But this Gillian is grounded like the other night at dinner, self-assured, peaceful.Gillian pops a berry into her mouth and closes her eyes and savors it, and it feels too intimate, suddenly, Caroline cannot go on watching, so she yells then, as if she's just come in, _Happy Hour’s Here! _and holds the bottle of wine above her head. 

Gillian’s smile envelops her whole face and she bounds towards Caroline, grabbing the bottle of wine and kissing Caroline on the cheek. Caroline inhales her for a moment—soap and pine and now, berries, and Caroline watches as her hair swings in front of her face, a bit, and notices the cut of her dress, and feels the pressure of her lips on her cheek, and swallows, and Gillian’s voice is high, sing-songy, _Hiya, Cazza_, and Caroline feels—not for the first time, but for the first time she admits to herself that she feels—that Gillian’s proximity to her own body is directly proportional to the swiftness of her heartbeat, and she thinks, seeing the dress and hearing the music and smelling the berries—

_Bloody hell._


	3. Happy Hour

The gratitude journal perhaps works too well.Or ends up doing something slightly different than intended.The leader of her group suggests it —yes, Gillian is going to a sodden, sappy, soppy women’s group (_Survivor Circle_, it’s called) in a church basement, God help her.But Caroline suggested it, because it meets in the same stuffy church basement as her spousal grief group, and so Gillian lumbers herself there, and finds piss poor coffee but decent biscuits, and it is an hour’s drive in the opposite direction from Harrogate, so she doesn’t know anyone there—has never even seen anyone there—and she isn’t going to make any friends.But the leader of the group is a Flamingo-like old lady who seems happy all the time, and like she is ready to see goodness in everyone, but, thank goodness, she never mentions God or Jesus.She says things like, “leave the past in the past,” and also “carry the past with you” and Gillian somehow doesn’t mind that the sayings are blatantly contradictory; she has this feeling that she is dong something for herself, and something for Raff and Calamity, too, by getting herself there and sitting there in silence and listening to other people’s sob stories.

So when the Flamingo happy old lady says, _just write down three things every day that you’re grateful for_, Gillian does. She finds it suits her, at the end of the day, and she keeps it up for a week, and then two weeks, and now it’s been a month, and there is something very striking about her particular gratitude journal (a notebook she pilfered from the trash at the store, with a k-pop band in front, that some customer had scratched the eyes off of).

Her gratitude journal is basically a list of things she loves about Caroline.

There are entries that don’t mention Caroline, of course, but strip away all the _Sheep brought in decent sum, good pint, Calam cute, Dad healthy, Raff studies OK, heard Robbie’s fine_, and it’s all Caroline, all the time.

_Caroline’s cuppa coffee_

_Caroline with Flora is a good role model for Ellie as a parent_

_Dad brought Caroline into my life_

_Caz in a skirt, HA!_

_Shit day, Caroline stopped by_

_C laughs at my jokes_

_C makes me laugh I snot out my nose_

_Caz in my life_

When she reads the full list, and notices it’s strong theme, after having made one entry for every day of November, she receives her own news with a little _Oh,_ and feels, then, in Caroline’s presence, so nervous that she finds it difficult to talk, and also so happy that she relaxes.Grateful. She is still _her_, of course, jumpy, her limbs swinging in the air as she sets up the plates for dinner, but, in large part thanks to Caz, she realizes now, she wants to be alive.And she sees ahead of her the goodness of being alive, and it feels like a gift she can accept with steadiness.

The _self control thing_ is from the old woman, too.And she can do it, see, because Raff and Ellie are well, and Calamity is growing into a sweet kid, and Alan and Celia are nearby and seem to appreciate Gillian, and Caroline, waltzing into the house with her special brand of “togetherness” doesn’t irk Gillian anymore, it inspires her.

And the thing is, Gillian knows Caroline loves her. This is the strange, wonderful gift she’s been given that she is just coming to trust. Gillian mucks up every conversation somehow, sure, with her neediness and instant pushing away, with her swearing and being a little too drunk and all at once too familiar and then distant.But somehow, Caroline accepts this in Gillian, and keeps coming back.And towering Caroline, who wears a pencil skirt and cashmere poncho better than anyone she’s ever known, who can gaze over the top of her bifocals and freeze an entire room—well, she’s not perfect. She’s self righteous and broken, too, just like Gillian, and she wouldn’t be in Gillian’s house, she wouldn't return Gillian’s texts, she wouldn’t let a lingering hand rest on Gillian’s forearm if she didn’t care. If she wished Gillian weren’t in her life.

Gillian doesn’t fancy herself any romantic prospect, of course, that would be absurd, Caroline would simply _never_—but Gillian is working hard on being grateful for what she has. Caroline’s presence as much as possible._Let love in_, they say at group.

So she’s telling herself that there is no reason this night is any different; she’s not even cooking for Caroline, setting anything nice up, it’s just food and a fire. But she puts on a dress, gets their favorite chicken curry takeaway, and she spends a fortune on bloody strawberries, fearing, then, as they’re sitting in bucket seat of her Rover that they’ll spill and be a waste or maybe Caroline won’t remember saying anything about strawberries anyway.

But as she’s standing by the window—she thinks she hears Caroline’s car but the night is awful foggy—touching the strawberries she is trying to meditatively hull, while she is doing breathing exercises from group—the berries _for_ Caroline become Caroline herself, and Gillian is thinking, _oh God, who am I kidding, I want to kiss her, that’s what I want_.She pops a strawberry into her mouth, rolls the sweet flesh around her tongue, and then the sing-song voice of Caroline comes into the kitchen, _Happy Hour’s Here! _loud and confident, in harmony with the violin strains Gillian has flooding through the house, and she feels caught, as if Caroline can see what she was thinking, and she blushes, and walks over to kiss her on the cheek, says, _Hiya Cazza_, and fears her heart is beating so loud and so fast that Caroline must be able to hear it.

They eat curry on the floor in front of the roaring fire. Gillian gets up to feed the fire, periodically, wishing, rather than knowing (she thinks) that Caroline watches her body as she walks out of the living room to fetch more wood.When Gillian sits down again, Caroline looks at the fire as she says, _You seem good._She cups her wine glass with both hands.

_Yeah, I am._

_The self-control thing working out for you?_

Caroline’s tone can be read as smirking and contemptuous or surprised but affectionate, and Gillian trusts it is the latter; the former she could not bear.Gillian nods. She pointedly does not take another sip of wine.They sit in silence, Gillian’s knee bouncing.

_I’m pleased for you_, Caroline says.Gillian jumps up for more berries. When she returns, Caroline’s legs are outstretched. Gillian risks a look at her, the stretch of her split-collar shirt.She has a ponytail; the wisps at the back of her next Gillian knows so well.She feels, sometimes, like she’s counted each one.

_You know,_ Caroline says, _When I approached the house, I heard the music, and I thought, oh, she has a hot date, someone special coming over, and then, well.I saw the strawberries.Thank you._

_Oh, no_, she says, shaking her head.She wants to say _yes, it is all for you_, but won’t. Can’t. Shouldn’t.

Caroline smiles, drinks. _So I’m not the hot date?_

Gillian floods with panic, feeling caught somehow. _N-no-no. Not at all, Caz_, she says, not sure what will come next, but sputtering, _it’s just—_

_Well, no need to be so emphatic about it_, Caroline says.

And Gillian doesn’t know which is worse; Caroline being mistaken that Gillian is indifferent, or Caroline being certain she isn’t. She decides for a middle ground. She looks down and says plainly, nary a stutter to be heard, _I mean yes. You are special._

The silence that follows feels heavy. Gillian picks at an errant thread on her sweater, even though, she realizes then, the fire has made it warm enough to go without.

_Well. Thank you._ Caroline says. Gillian feels a distance in her voice.

_I didn’t mean —_ Gillian is panicking now, looking at the bowl of strawberries, her bloody lipstick, the stupid dress, and God, the music feels like it has just increased in volume.

_I wanted to treat you—make a nice, comfortable evening._

Caroline is wearing an unreadable smirk. _Ok, _she says, in a tone Gillian knows too well, that always sends her reeling, filling silence with more words. _Just special then._

_Right-r-right. Simple._Gillian’s laughs, then, but it is forced, high-pitched.She wants to run, but doesn’t know where to go, or why; she has gotten up half a dozen times already.And she feels, suddenly, like maybe she’s not sure what they are talking about, but the thickness of the air, the heaviness of the breath hanging between them, leaves no doubt. They have become serious all of a sudden.

_You all right?_ Caroline says, like she’s speaking to a child.

_Never better_, Gillian says.

The fire roars. Gillian pointedly does not look at Caroline; she can’t bear to see what expression of bewilderment or frustration Caroline must be wearing. She wants them to walk back to where they were, traipse through fertile ground back to the path, with the uncomplicated fire, but they are somewhere far away, lost in a forest, full with dried kindling and dead trees.And then, Caroline says the worst thing she possibly could.

_I should go._

Caroline tucks her legs back beneath her, but not moving more than that, waiting, it seems, for Gillian to respond.

_Yeah_, is all Gillian says.Then, _Really?_

_Unless you don’t want me to?_A bit of exasperation creeps into Caroline’s tone.

_You can do what you want_, Gillian says, shutting down, trying to exit the conversation intact, not sure how she bungled it so badly, it was the fucking strawberries, wasn’t it? Or the music? Or her. It was her, always her, mucking up the good thing.

_I know I can do what I want, _Caroline says, _so why does this feel difficult all of a sudden?_

Gillian can’t—she can’t listen to words about this, she can’t have Caroline prattle on, she can’t say yes/no/yes/no in front of the fire like a couple of teenagers, she feels in her body, suddenly, impulse only.

She needs to know what is happening, and if she kisses Caroline, she’ll know.

She propels her body through space, dives, almost, at Caroline, and she’s not sure she’s aimed herself correctly, really, she thinks that perhaps she will tumble into Caroline’s magnificent cleavage, and miss her face completely, which would not be an entirely unwelcome fate, of course—but she makes contact with Caroline’s lips, suddenly, and her hands are propping her up on the carpet in front of the fire, and Caroline has seemingly not moved, but she must have, even slightly, put her face towards Gillian because _it’s happening_. Their lips are touching and every cell in Gillian’s body erupts into a chorus of _kissing Caroline! _and after a moment Caroline’s lips part, just slightly, but enough that Gillian can register the heat of Caroline’ s breath, the softness of her lips, and she thinks, _oh God, it is better than I ever imagined—_

And then, just as quickly as it began, Gillian feels a strong hand on her shoulder, pushing her away, and Caroline’s lips close, and her head jerks back, and Gillian opens her eyes to find Caroline is looking at her with such an expression of surprise and dread that Gillian stands, needing only to get out of the room Caroline is in, but Caroline is faster, much faster, and says, as she turns and walks out of the living room, seeming to take all the air with her, _Oh, Gillian_, in a tone of abject disappointment she must use with particularly dastardly students.

Gillian steps back, as if slapped, and Caroline turns, wrenching her coat from the hook in the hallway—it takes three graceless yanks—and she walks out of the house into the fog, and Gillian watches her car drive away. She cannot see much but the headlights glaring and then disappearing down the road, but Gillian stares into the blackness anyway, touching her lips, which are burning from the inside.


	4. Bloody Hell

_Oh Bloody Hell._

Sure, when Caroline said _So I am not the hot date? _she was halfway to flirting. Bollocks, of course, she was all the way to flirting, who was she kidding?But that was allowed, wasn’t, it with someone’s ostensibly fully heterosexual step-sister?_Christ_.That was allowed, but kissing definitely was not, and she did not, she swears, expect that.

She has no visibility on the roads, none, it is dark and foggy and the rain from yesterday feels slushy int he late fall chill._ Just drive_, she tells herself, and she does, but _Gillian, Gillian, Gillian,_ repeats like an incantation in her head; every bump of the road seems to make the sound.

Poor Gillian. Standing, staring pensively by the window.Probably pacing and biting her nails now.Sodding bloody Gillian, how dare she pull a stunt like that, treating Caroline like some kind of amusement, like some kind of dyke cow, what, was Gillian so hard up she’d cast off men and just expect that Caroline would fall at her bloody feet?

But Caroline knows Gillian wasn’t playing, wasn’t mocking Caroline. She knows, she could see, the way she was reverently hulling the goddamned strawberries, the way she approached Caroline in the house, the way, yes, her eyes had gotten so dark and intense when she moved in for the kiss, and Caroline had seen her crumble when she pulled away, she had seen her face fall in devastating panic when Caroline ran for the door. She had seen the terror in her eyes.

_Fuck._

Caroline grips the steering wheel tighter, not wanting to run off the road - what an ugly fate, another death on Gillian’s conscience, Caroline in a ditch because she couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her—

_Bloody Hell_.

When Caroline gets home she sits in her damp coat in the easy chair by the door, staring straight ahead, not yet willing to traipse up the stairs and sleep alone. She is thinking about Gillian’s blue dress, her lean arms, how sitting there, in front of the fire, she wanted to rest her head on Gillian’s lap, she wanted Gillian to run her fingers through her hair, and before Caroline’s head had known Gillian was kissing her, before the _no _made the seemingly halting, slow journey from from her head to her mouth, Caroline knows, she recalls with precision, that she had kissed Gillian back, that her lips had parted and that Gillian’s breath filled something in her that she had not known was empty, and now, _Christ_, now all she wanted was more.

_Love?_Alan’s voice from the hallway._You all right?_

_Yeah, yeah, _Caroline says, not looking back at him, afraid she’ll give something away if she turns.She had thought they were asleep.

_Gillian’s been trying to reach you, love, says she was worried about he fog on the way over here.You left your phone at hers, see.Well, here it is—_

Alan hands Caroline his phone and she looks down at a text message from Gillian.

_Hiya Dad- Caz left phone here. Fog thick. Let me know she gets home.Also tell her about phone. Also tell her I'm sorry, none your biz about what. XO._

_There you have it_, Alan says, and Caroline stands to hand him back his phone. _Thank you_, she says, flooded with love for him, suddenly, his steadiness, his care. She hugs him, and he returns it, betraying no surprise, seeming to infuse his touch with faith in her, that she’ll do the right thing, that she’ll be all right, that they all will.

_Goodnight, love_, he says, and she holds back a few quiet tears.


	5. You Can If You Want To

It’s a crisp, gorgeous morning, and she wakes thinking only about having to go back to Gillian’s for her phone. She asks her mother and Alan to fetch it, but there is no reason for them to drive all the way over there, and besides, the Lexus is getting serviced, and Caroline said she’d take them to the shop.Caroline knows well enough to drop it, then, as her mother scowls skeptically at her from across the room.

She tries not to fuss too much with her hair; her mother might notice that, too.

_Shall I let her know you’re on your way? _Alan says, his sweetness and obliviousness rolled into one.

_No no!_Caroline shouts, too emphatically, she fears, and shuffles off.On the way over, she prays, first, to a higher power she does not believe in that Gillian will not be there; that she will kindly and nonchalantly leave the phone on the kitchen counter with a neutral note, or no note at all, and Caroline can retrieve it and not mention it again. Or at least not mention it until she’s worked out exactly what she wants to say.

But of course Caroline knows, as she pulls up the winding road towards Gillian’s, that Gillian will do no such thing. She will wait.She is too forceful, too powerful, too bloody smart and too bloody brave. She will force Caroline to look at her, she will force Caroline to take the phone from her hands.Caroline will have to consider the proximity of their bodies, she will have to look at her lips, and will have to face that she could not sleep last night for thoughts of Gillian, for wondering what would have happened had she let the kiss continue, had she parted her lips wider, had she gripped Gillian’s shoulders rather than pushed them away.What it would have felt like to run her fingers along Gillian’s skin, to kiss her jawbone, to grip the back of her head—

_Bloody hell._

As predicted, Gillian is sitting on the stone retaining wall, watching Caroline approach.She’s wearing the red sweater over a plaid shirt and dungarees, she looks elegaic, like centuries of wisdom lie in her face.She holds Caroline’s gaze as Caroline steps out of her car; her eyes are flinty, not letting go.Caroline has noticed Gillian’s beauty before, of course, but not like now. She feels punched by it, like it is taunting her._Wasteful, proud fool. She’s been here all along._

Caroline also feels exposed, like Gillian knows something Caroline is only coming to understand—that the kiss could have gone on, that Caroline’s rejection of it overrode an instinct, and Caroline becomes enraged, then, that Gillian could deign to think such a thing, when it was _she_ who lunged at Caroline, _she_ who decided to risk the stability of the whole _bloody family_ for some ill advised snog.

_My phone?_ Caroline says, as the rage settles over her.

_Good morning_, Gillian responds.

Caroline stares at her. Gillian sighs.

_Said I was sorry_, she says then, looking down at her coffee, a bit of the strength of her veneer cracking.Then she looks up._You accepting it? M’pology?_

_Yes, _Caroline says, not sure she’s sincere, and then walks towards the house to get her phone. She wants to leave. Needs to leave.

Gillian swings her legs down off the retaining wall and cuts Caroline off, walking into her own house first, and Caroline cannot help but look at Gillian’s low slung hips, the cut of her sweater, the back pocket of her dungarees, where Caroline could imagine resting her hands—

_Cold day for coffee outside_, Caroline says then, trying to shake her own focus.

_View's still gorgeous in the cold._

_Didn’t say they weren’t, _Caroline says, thinkingagain of her own view—

Through the door, Gillian holds Carolines phone our towards her, but when Caroline reaches for it, she pulls it back for a moment, and looks at Caroline.Her eyes are glassy.Gillian either didn’t sleep or was crying, or some combination of the two, and Caroline feels simpatico with her then, like this is a mistake they both made. It would be up to Caroline to make it right, too. She wants to hug her, suddenly, gather her shoulders into an embrace, let her rest her head on her chest, anything.

Gillian is tapping her feet, the familiar, stuttering energy coursing through her body.Then she looks down and says quietly, _Really don’t want to lose you, Caz._

Caroline puts one hand on Gillian’s shoulders, and another lifts up her chin slightly._You haven’t, all right? _Caroline says, in the placating tone she sometimes uses with Flora. And she means it. it will be OK. Caroline can’t lose Gillian either. She won’t.

The tone works, because Gillian softens, relieved, and smiles.

_Radiant_, is all Caroline can think, noting that her hands are now on Gillian’s biceps, and Gillian doesn’t mind, and a flood comes into Caroline’s ears, suddenly, she can hear nothing, it is silent and defining at the same time, the blood rushing through her body, she feels like she might lose her balance, and the only thing holding her up is Gillian’s face, eyes burning a light, laser blue-green.Caroline lets her hands stay on Gillian’s shoulders, and Gillian makes no move. The contact feels burning hot, laden with meaning. Caroline doesn’t pull away, and her thumbs slowly start stroking the fabric of Gillian’s shirt, and if Caroline could hear her own head, she’d be saying, _What the fuck are you doing, Caroline_, but she can’t. All she can hear is Gillian’s breath. All she can see is Gillian’s face, as Caroline’s touch seems to breathe life into it. Their eye contact is steady, and Caroline watches in wonder as Gillian’s face changes from panicked to defiant to searching to triumphant.Gillian looks at Caroline as if she knows Caroline better than Caroline herself, and she does, really, because then Gillian says, _You can if you want to._

So Caroline does.She leans forward and kisses Gillian how she wanted to the night before, before she came to her senses. She parts Gillian’s mouth with her tongue, eliciting a moan from Gillian that wakes Caroline from her core. She searches her mouth, she runs a hand through Gillian’s hair, she sucks her bottom lip and thinks only, _Oh God, what a waste, all the years, the nights, days wasted when we could have been kissing._As she tugs at Gillian’s shirt, Gillian presses the length of her body into Caroline, until Caroline is pushed against the wall, and Gillian’s energy is frenetic, like she wants to devour every bit of Caroline.Her hands snake underneath Caroline’s blouse, they are white hot, sparking her skin, and her mouth on Caroline’s seems to be feeding off the energy of Caroline’s lips.Gillian’s desire is maddening; her thigh pressing between Caroline’s legs, and Caroline feels half drunk off it, like she had slipped a jigger of brandy in her coffee, she is swooning, gripping the back of Gillian’s head with her strong, arm, smashing their lips together and it is—well, it is ecstasy.They’re both gasping for air. Caroline turns her head for a moment to catch her breath, one hand on the back of Gillian’s head, the other underneath her shirt. She doesn’t move her hands; she cannot bear the thought of not being in contact, but the slightest pulling away to breathe seems to alarm Gillian, who takes a step back and looks at Caroline. Her eyes are panicked like they were the night before.

_Don’t you — d-don’t — you can’t just run outa here again_, she says. 

Caroline’s answer is wordless—a slow suck on Gillian’s earlobe, a trail of kisses over her closed eyes, and then back to her mouth with a lip parting moan.

_This is madness, you know that? _Caroline says.

_Yep, _comes Gillian’s quick reply, and she leans into it, circling her arms around Caroline’s waist, devouring her mouth in another kiss that makes Caroline feel as if she is soaring, flying over land, never to return.

_What was that you were saying about self control?_ Caroline asks.

_Sod it, _Gillian says, reaching for Caroline’s belt buckle.


End file.
